SPORTEL Report: The Push/Pull of Social Media, OTT Streaming Powered by New Tools Panelists parse the transformation of sports-content creations and distribution By Ken Kerschbaumer Monday, November 7, 2022 - 11:32 am
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SPORTEL, the annual sports-marketplace event where rights deals are the name of the game, is increasingly shifting its focus to how technology and new platforms are transforming sports-content creation and distribution. A panel discussion zeroing in on the convergence of next-gen production tools, social media, and OTT laid clear the opportunities ahead and how best to address them.
A key challenge in the current digital landscape is figuring out how to set up an effective digital and social media team. How big should it be? Who is in charge of what? And how can technology make a difference in the way content is created and published?
Endeavor's Peter Bellamy: We all work in this hybrid media-rights landscape and are trying to add value.
Endeavor Chief Commercial Officer Peter Bellamy said that setting up that team properly depends on the maturity of the business and the size of the organization.
If you are starting a direct-to-consumer journey with your fans, he said, you can start with two or three people. But I would say a lot of our clients have maybe five to 10. And then our tier-one clients will have very large teams.
The difference between serving tier-one clients and smaller clubs or leagues has required technology providers themselves to adjust. Anmol Malhotra, global head of sports partnerships, SNAP, noted that, in the early days of SNAP, partners like the NFL had multiple staffers focused just on the Snapchat platform.
We soon realized that we can't scale a business because not everyone is the NFL or the NBA, he explained. We had to change the way that we actually work with our partners and create tools to empower them, no matter how big or small. Our goal more recently is making these tools that empower our partners to do it on their own because we can't handhold everybody.
Magnifi's Meghna Krishna: You might be doing a great job, but, if no one has heard of you or no one has seen the content, it's kind of a wasted effort.
Magnifi Chief Revenue Officer Meghna Krishna said Magnifi can help a small social-media team appear larger than life, thanks to rules-based highlights creation. Key is the ability for a smaller team to crank out more content.
There's no way the current number of people can churn out the volume of content required to have a presence on social media or at least the presence that you would like to have, she said. We create automated digital- ready content at speed and at scale and in real time. And that is required today to be active on social media and also drive traffic to your OTT or broadcast channels. We do it in an automated fashion that is AI-based and can create highlights by team, by player, by any event that is happening. It helps monetize and generate revenue.
For example, every social-media platform requires a slightly different approach to how video is served up.
Some will require 30 seconds, some will require three minutes, others will require 10 minutes, she explained. Our platform allows highlights to be created for any of the sizes and lengths with the click of a button, and then you can publish it again with another click of a button. That allows the team to focus on the important part of the analytics and understanding of consumer behavior and publish more content that's more applicable to their audience.
C360's Carlos Silva: There is nothing worse than an executive who says we need to put it on Twitter or Instagram but they've never even downloaded the app.
C360 CEO Carlos Silva said the team-building process also requires management to be on all the platforms to ensure that proper decisions are made.
There is nothing worse than an executive who says we need to put it on Twitter or Instagram, but they've never even downloaded the app and used it, he added. You need staff that understands each of the platforms, and, every three months, you've gotta be aware that it changes. Platforms like SNAP are different now than they were eight months ago. If you take it for granted, your content will be terrible, and you'll wonder why you fail. So don't be lazy.
Bellamy noted that, for teams and clubs, the best way forward is to realize that not every single engagement with your fans can drive a transactional process.
What they need to be doing is driving a centralized data strategy where they can understand every fan and what they're doing, he explained. For example, a fan may very rarely go to games at the stadium but can buy a huge amount of merchandise and watch loads of on-demand video. But maybe they don't interact with social media. You need to understand those trends and surface offers where the fan can feel like there is added value. For example, they watch 20 VOD assets in a month and get 20% off a shirt in the online store. That is a crucial part: it's not all about direct revenue streams.
Bellamy added that, in the past two years, the end-to-end OTT video-platform provider has continued to optimize platform solutions and flexibility for clients.
We've also built growth services and consultancy layers around that platform as well, he said, and we think that has been very additive to our partnership. We all work in this very complex kind of hybrid media-rights landscape and are trying to add value and look at what success looks like. And then, we build the product according to that kind of trends and look at actual growth services to deliver increased revenue opportunities.
Defining a Great Experience The panelists agreed that a good video experience begins
